Bucket List Update, Some Observations and a Literary Timeline

One book added, bringing the total back to its original of 185 books:

• The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)

I am a fan of www.pinterest.com, and some of my favorite sayings about books and reading come from this website. There are sayings like

• Book Hangover: Inability to start a new book because you're still living in the last books world.
• There is no such thing as too many books.
• "I do not want to just read books; I want to climb inside them and live there."
• That moment when you finish a book, look around, and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives as though you didn't just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback.

I have yet to find a saying, though, that expresses that feeling when, as I am reading a book written in a different era, my everyday life, my writing, my language, my thoughts assume the same mannerisms as those in the book. For example, I am reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. So, I am finding that my writing style is more verbose and I'm using terms like 'behoove' and 'that which was' and so on. So forgive my wordiness as I read Pride and Prejudice. Ands I read through the bucket list, I want this experience to also be a learning opportunity.

In addition to being a bookoholic and obsessive reader, I am a lover of music. I love just about all types of music. My iPod is a treasure trove of just about every musical genre there is - no exxageration. From the time I was 7 years old I played different instruments; piano, violin and viola were the most prevalent. So, it just makes sense that I compare literature to music. And just as music is broken into distinct eras based on the distinct musical influences of the time, literature is also broken into distinct eras.

I learned about the musical eras when I was young. My grandmother, seeing that I enjoyed plunking on her piano, asked a retired concert pianist friend of hers to give me lessons. Mrs. Marion Baker. She loved music. And she firmly believed that in order to learn to play instruments, to make music, one must learn the history of music and be able to write in the musical language.

My first lesson books weren't simple songs or simplified versions. They were a set of books that spanned the four major musical eras; The Baroque Era, The Classical Era, The Romantic Era, and The Modern Era. Each book was filled with pieces by composers who best represented the musical style of that era. This was supplemented by sheet music either of Mrs. Baker's favorite composers or pieces she composed herself. In addition to learning about each composer, I was instructed in how to write notes in different clefs and put them together to form chords, tunes, etc.

We spent many hours together working on mastering not only the music but also the emotion behind the music. Long after Mrs. Baker died I would spend hours on the piano playing just to relax or decompress. And to this day I still prefer music from the Baroque period over Classical and Romantic.

But I digress. As universal the language of music is, unfortunately it is not the same with liberature. Language, culture, class structure, superstition and more contribute to variations in literary timelines. In general, the following (simplified) timeline is accepted for European/American literature.  And almost every era listed can be further delineated into several sub-periods.

• Pre-Anglo-Saxon Period
• Anglo-Saxon Period
• Middle English
• Renaissance
• Neoclassical
• Age of Reason
• Romantic
• Victorian
• Edwardian / Naturalism
• Modern
• Post-Modern

These are two websites I like that identify the literary periods and distinguishing authors and publications.

http://www.online-literature.com/periods/timeline.php
http://www.socsdteachers.org/tzenglish/literature_timeline.htm

While these are generally accepted periods for European/American literature, I don't know if or how this differs from African and Asian literature. The cultures rarely intermingled until fairly recently (in historical terms). I will be looking into this in future. So, more to come!